]]>Airbnb users have many options when they visit London, but they and their hosts are probably unaware that these short-term lets are often illegal. However, that’s about to change – much to the ire of the hotel industry.

On Monday, housing minister Brandon Lewis set out plans for short-term lets to be deregulated in London. A 42-year-old London law says that anyone wanting to rent out their home for less than 90 days must get planning permission to do so, or pay a £20,000 ($30,450) penalty per offence. The government now wants that law scrapped.

“We live in the 21st century, and London homeowners should be able to rent out their home for a short period without having to pay for a council permit. These laws … need to be updated for the internet age,” Lewis said in a statement.

However, the government would still restrict short-term letting to 90 days per calendar year or less, so that the properties don’t effectively become hotels. The properties also can’t be business premises, and councils will be able to apply for “small localized exemptions from the new flexibility, where there is a strong case to do so.”

I’d say it was very silly for London to have different rules from the rest of the country, regarding services such as Airbnb — so this move should be welcomed at least on that front. However, the hotel industry doesn’t quite see it that way.

The British Hospitality Association has been lobbying against these changes for quite some time and says it still has serious concerns about health and safety. In an emailed statement, Association policy director Jackie Grech said the relevant clause had been “hastily pushed through … without any concern for the consequences such as security, employment, housing shortages, anti-social behavior and the high quality reputation of tourism in the U.K.”

She added:

When the first claims come through, they could be serious injuries. It is possible to look out for the interests of community, customers and employees; the hospitality industry does this every day. These multi-billion dollar companies need to do the same and we are particularly concerned for small, family run establishments who have to compete with giant multi billion pound companies.

This all comes a few months after the publication of a U.K. government review of the so-called sharing economy, conducted by Debbie Wosskow, the CEO of home exchange platform Love Home Swap. Astonishingly, the review suggested that accommodation-sharing platforms should be less burdened with regulation.

]]>London-based online currency transfer outfit TransferWise has raised a $58 million Series C round that was led by Andreessen Horowitz. This follows a $25 million Series B round just seven months ago, which included Virgin chief Richard Branson and original backer Peter Thiel (who are also in the current round, along with Index Ventures, IA Ventures and Seedcamp.) Like CurrencyFair over in Ireland, TransferWise uses cash reserves in various countries to bypass the banks and offer conversion rates that are far cheaper than those offered by traditional banks and remittance services. According to the Financial Times, Andreessen Horowitz won a competitive bidding process to invest in TransferWise, which is now valued at “close to $1 billion”.

]]>This weekend will see the start of the Web We Want festival at London’s Southbank Centre. Its organizers hope it will spark a movement that’s in some ways comparable to environmentalism.

That may be a tall order, but — as I reported back in March – the Web We Want campaign, timed to run 25 years after the web was invented, is the brainchild of the World Wide Web Foundation itself. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor, is at the helm. And, refreshingly, the campaign is trying to avoid the grayness and (in my opinion) hot air of more formal efforts such as the Internet Governance Forum and Netmundial.

“The first step is that we take these topics out of the usual internet governance sphere and into the general public,” Renata Avila, the global campaign lead for Web We Want, told me. “Our main objective [is] to make it popular, engaging and interesting for the common person and not only for internet geeks, to show everyone that they should care.”

Diverse approach

The aim of the wider campaign is to crowdsource a “Magna Carta” for the web, based on principles such as privacy, net neutrality, free expression, affordable access and open and diverse infrastructure.

The festival taking place on the bank of the Thames River this weekend, and on two other weekends in November and May, is only part of this picture – albeit the most high-profile part. Activities will also take place in 20 locations around the world, from Bosnia to Mexico. “We are managing to engage people beyond the usual European-U.S. circles,” Avila said.

The Southbank festival was designed alongside Jude Kelly, the center’s artistic director. Apart from a multitude of talks and seminars covering topics from surveillance to gaming to art — the program was largely crowdsourced — the show also includes a “glass box” where, since earlier this week, people have been developing a new website for the Southbank Centre. Members of the public can come and see this process, which incorporates “the principles of an open, transparent and accessible web,” and make suggestions about the site’s design.

The organizers are also setting up a mesh network on the site, to show people how they can create their own community Wi-Fi network. As Avila explained, education is central to the campaign’s aims:

We are basically building a movement around a common group which is the internet, following a similar approach that the environmental movement followed. We’re encouraging people about the various actions they can take to improve this common resource.

That’s not easy and it cannot happen without education and awareness. Engagement cannot happen […] if we keep discussion at such a high technical level that the average person is not aware they can change things by their consumer choices. It’s a political issue as well.

Beyond reaction

Work began on the Web We Want campaign before Edward Snowden’s mass surveillance revelations in mid-2013, though this topic has of course become a central strand. According to Avila, the program she is helping to direct has taken as inspiration the successful SOPA and PIPA protests of 2012, as well as the suicide of prominent open-web activist Aaron Swartz.

“Scholars and activists realized that reaction, reaction, reaction was not enough,” Avila told me, explaining that the internet activism sphere has “very limited impact to stop” things like – to take a very current example – the Australian government legitimizing mass surveillance this week.

This sphere needs to expand to include larger community and family groups, she said – people who have not traditionally been internet activists, but whose interests are affected by the things that engage activists. The end goal, Avila suggested, was to have ordinary people set the web agenda for companies and politicians, rather than things only working the other way round.

Whether or not this campaign has a major impact in itself, that’s as worthy a goal as you’re likely to find.

]]>Julian Assange will “soon” leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been taking refuge since breaking bail terms two years ago, the Wikileaks founder said Monday in a press conference. He provided no further details. Reports earlier on Monday suggested he is suffering from health issues. Assange has been hiding in the embassy since 2012, after being accused of rape and sexual coercion in Sweden a couple of years previously. The Australian fears being extradited to the U.S. over the leaking of classified military documents, via Wikileaks, by soldier Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning. Last year Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison over the leaks.

]]>Uber has been banned in Berlin, but is continuing to operate in the German capital nonetheless. That’s a financial risk not only for Uber, but for its drivers too — and the company has not as yet promised to pay their fines.

The ban, described by Uber as “not progressive,” came through late Wednesday with immediate effect, meaning Uber is liable for a €25,000 ($33,462) fine each time it illegally carries a passenger. Its drivers — not that it admits to having drivers as such — will also be liable for fines of up to €20,000 ($26,780) for flouting the ban.

When Uber lodges its challenge to the ban, as it says it will, it may succeed in suspending the ban as it did in Hamburg last month, keeping everyone safe from being fined. However, it doesn’t appear to have done this yet.

Taxi association fight

Back in April, taxi operator Richard Leipold, who also runs city taxi association BTV, won a case against Uber because the firm’s cars are unlicensed but run like licensed taxis do – echoes of Uber’s travails in London and many other places in Europe. However, Leipold chose not to enforce the injunction at the time because, if it was overturned, he would have been liable for Uber’s lost earnings.

So on Wednesday, the Berlin Senate’s department of civil and regulatory affairs stepped in with its own prohibition order. It said it was banning Uber in order to protect passengers from the dangers of unlicensed drivers, and also to protect Uber’s drivers, who may not have the right kind of insurance to cover them in the event of a taxi-related mishap. It also noted that it was trying to protect the taxi industry.

Leipold welcomed the Berlin ban in a separate statement, in which he insisted that Berlin’s taxi industry had no problem with innovative apps, as long as they stick to the rules. He cited Taxi.eu, which acts as a European portal to licensed taxis, as an example. If Uber wins its challenge to the ban, it would be the city administration picking up the tab.

Uber will “stand behind” drivers

In a Thursday blog post, Uber said it would challenge the injunction, which it claimed “seeks to restrict freedom and limit mobility in Berlin and beyond.” However, it hasn’t actually filed its challenge yet. A Bloomberg report suggested that Uber has taken out extra insurance to cover its drivers, fixing at least one of the Senate’s complaints.

Uber maintains that it doesn’t have drivers — Fabien Nestmann, the service’s Munich general manager and national spokesman, told me on Thursday that it only provides a platform for drivers and passengers. This takes in both Uber Black (the pricier service) and uberPOP (the cheaper ride-sharing service), both of which are affected by the ban. “Drivers go online when they wish to do so and we’re certainly keeping the platform up in Berlin until further notice,” he said.

Has Uber warned its not-Uber-drivers that they face fines of up to €20,000 for continuing to use the platform? Nestmann said Uber was in “constant dialog” with them. Will it pay their fines? “We will stand behind our drivers very firmly,” he said, refusing to elaborate.

As I wrote in the context of Uber’s fight with London cabbies, it’s important to remember that this isn’t simply a case of dinosaurs resisting change. Berlin’s taxi drivers have to go through training and certification to legally do what they do, and there are restrictions on the number of drivers that are allowed to operate. It’s no wonder that they’re up in arms about services that “allow” anyone to suddenly become a taxi driver – and no surprise that the city’s unhappy about it too.

In the meantime, it’s all very well for Uber to say it will keep operating, but its drivers might want to think twice before doing so — at least until they get a firm promise from the company that it will pay their fines, or until Uber gets its challenge in.

This article was updated at 8.20am PT to emphasise that the ban may be temporarily lifted when Uber lodges its appeal.

]]>Google’s investment arm, Google Ventures, will open an office in London with a $100 million fund for startups in Europe, the company said late Wednesday.

In a blog post, Google Ventures chief Bill Maris said European startups had “enormous potential.” Meanwhile Google corporate development head David Drummond told the Financial Times that “great companies will come out of” the various European startup clusters.

According to the FT, the 4 general partners in the new Ventures office will include Eze Vidra, head of Google’s London Campus, IDEO design director Tom Hulme, serial angel Peter Read and code.org’s Avid Larizadeh. Blogger turned VC MG Siegler “will move to London for short a period of time to serve as a liaison between the US and European operations, while we get this up and running,” a Google spokesman said.

This is a busy time for new European funds, many of which are much larger than Google’s. Last week Russia’s Runa Capital unveiled a $200 million fund with a European focus. Index Ventures announced a $546 million fund in June, and the month before that Balderton (formerly Benchmark) Capital put a fresh $305 million pot on the table. Last year Earlybird revealed a $205 million fund, Partech a $175 million fund and Accel London a $475 million fund.

Of course, Google is Google, and many startups will be attracted to the name and Silicon Valley links, as well as the possibility of perhaps getting acquired at some point by the web giant.

This article was updated to note that MG Siegler is not, as was reported, going to be a partner as such at Google Ventures London.

]]>There are many things that can enable disruption, but let’s talk about two in particular: technological advantage and playing by different rules. It’s easy to get the two confused – as many people are doing in the case of Uber and the traditional taxi strikes it is inspiring across Europe.

The drivers that will gridlock London on Wednesday (others are also striking in Berlin, Paris, Madrid, Milan and Lisbon) are Luddites and idiots, according to some commentators. They’re just trying to hold back the tide of technologically-enabled competition. But is that a fair assessment?

Unfair fight

The very well-funded Uber and rivals such as Lyft and Hailo certainly do pose a threat to traditional cabs: their apps provide a more convenient way for people to find a car and their real-time marketplace model (they don’t actually maintain fleets as such) is more efficient than just driving around looking for a raised hand. However, their biggest advantage is regulatory, certainly in places like London, where traditional “black cab” drivers have to stick to well-defined rules.

Here’s the problem: if you’re a London taxi driver, you need a license from Transport for London (TfL) to operate. There are two kinds of licensed cab driver there, black cab and private hire/minicab. Minicab drivers can only take pre-arranged bookings with a pre-arranged fee, and black cabs are the ones that drive around looking for business, are easily identifiable, and carry a meter.

The minicab conditions exist largely because of passenger safety – it’s relatively tricky to tell which drivers are genuine and which are potential threats, and there has historically been a problem with drivers aggressively touting for business. What Uber is doing is to take on licensed minicab drivers (at least in theory; the company’s London recruitment page has a dead link for getting TfL licensing) and send them out to compete with the black cabs in the metered-travel business.

The black cab drivers say, correctly, that this is illegal. TfL, however, has decided that the smartphone app-based meter used to calculate Uber fares is not a taximeter, and has asked the High Court to back it up.

This was a very silly decision on TfL’s part. The law clearly states that a taximeter “means a device for calculating the fare to be charged in respect of any journey by reference to the distance travelled or time elapsed since the start of the journey (or a combination of both)” — you could get tangled up in whether Uber’s app is a “device” or whether the GPS-equipped smartphone would have to be the device, but it’s pretty clear that it does what a taximeter does.

Regulatory failure

The black cab drivers are in a terrible position. Their regulator is effectively saying that they have to play by certain rules (such as going through rigorous testing for having memorized London’s streets) while others who are doing much the same job don’t have to be equally compliant. Under this set of rules, black cab drivers don’t merely have to fend off their crowdsourced, app-enabled rivals – they have to do so with one arm tied behind their back.

It’s worth noting that many traditional black cab drivers happily signed up for Hailo, a service that was originally designed to bring them into the app-enabled age, before turning against the company when it moved into the competing minicab space as well. It’s not like they’re entirely resistant to change — though how many will now sign up to participate in Uber’s Hailo-esque UberTaxi service, not coincidentally announced on Wednesday, remains to be seen.

The fault, therefore, lies with the regulator, not the cabbies. And those who are so keen to deride the cabbies for their supposed neo-Luddism and idiocy should really be asking whether they want to see the regulations changed in London, Paris, San Francisco, San Antonio and beyond. Should all taxis be deregulated? Should Uber be more heavily regulated? I don’t know – that’s a public policy decision. But it’s a far more complex argument than the one painting traditional taxi drivers as fools and protectionist villains and Uber as the swift, smart underdog.

Regulation is really tough these days, with the pace of technological innovation being as speedy as it is. Rules that suited one age suddenly don’t fit the next, and it takes a while for them to catch up. In the interim, some traditional players sometimes find themselves at a severe and unfair disadvantage that’s not of their own making. Don’t blame them for that – and don’t assume that their disadvantage is wholly caused by their rivals’ inherent technological superiority.

PS – I’m going to an event this evening where the organizers warned attendees that there’s a taxi strike in Berlin, but Uber has helpfully stepped in with the offer of free and discounted rides. Uber is currently banned from operating in Berlin, so that’s illegal, but who cares, right? Disruption!

]]>We’ve covered TransferWise quite a few times – along with one or two rivals such as CurrencyFair, the London-based financial technology startup offers a genuinely disruptive foreign exchange service that significantly undercuts the banks. Its backers apparently also continue to see great potential: having led TransferWise’s $6 million Series A round just over a year ago, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures has again participated in the firm’s $25 million Series B, alongside Index Ventures, Virgin boss Richard Branson, IA Ventures, TAG, and Le Monde owner Xavier Niel. TransferWise, run by former Skype director Taavet Hinrikus, says it will use the funds for marketing.

]]>London’s transport authority will ask the British High Court to decide whether car services such as Uber that use smartphones to determine the customer’s fare should be regulated in the same way as traditional “black cabs” and private hire services.

As in France and New York and pretty much every other city where app-based services like Uber are operational, London has seen a significant backlash from more old-school rivals. In London, the taxi industry is regulated by Transport for London (TfL), which makes sure that cabbies all have “The Knowledge” — a comprehensive, testable understanding of the city’s intricate and ancient streets that obviates the need for GPS or paper maps.

London’s cabbies are furious with the likes of Uber and Hailo, not just because they pose a massive threat by being more convenient, but because their drivers apparently don’t need to adhere to the same stringent standards. Last week black cab drivers attacked and vandalized Hailo’s offices, and a big protest is planned for 11 June, with the intention of gridlocking the U.K. capital.

One of the traditional cabbies’ points is that only licensed cabs can have taximeters, the meters that calculate distance travelled and the resulting fare. The drivers claim that the new-fangled smartphone apps that underpin Uber and the like qualify as taximeters because they calculate distance and fares, which would mean that Uber cars are currently breaking the law by not being properly licensed as taxis.

On Thursday, TfL indicated in a statement that it was inclined to side with Uber on this one:

TfL set out its provisional view that smart phones used by private hire drivers – which act as GPS tracking devices to measure journey distances and time taken, and relays information so that fares can be calculated remotely from the vehicle – do not constitute the equipping of a vehicle with a ‘taximeter’.

However, the transport authority admitted the law in this area was somewhat woolly, and said it wanted High Court judges to clear things up. TfL also said it had audited Uber’s record keeping and business model and found that, while the records were in order, “TfL remains concerned about certain technical aspects of Uber’s operating model and this is being addressing with the operator.”

The cabbies aren’t impressed and told the BBC they’d be launching a case of their own. Stay tuned.

]]>Google has bought London security startup spider.io, which deals in detecting ad fraud. Founder Douglas de Jager and his small team specialize in combating scams like hidden display ad inventory and click fraud botnets — swarms of computers that have been quietly co-opted by hackers to generate masses of click-throughs on website ads, driving revenue to the website owner without driving customers to the advertiser. Google said it will put the spider.io technology to use in its video and display ad products to give advertisers and publishers “a clearer, cleaner picture of what campaigns and media are truly delivering strong results.”